Poetics and Poetry Discussion

not many poets in the corridor this morning, you dont have to worry i just gave england a trankquilliser, he will be sound asleep in a couple of minutes
where do you find these people, what sort of places do you hang out in
i'm glad i'm not educated, oh dear what do we do with him, it must be embarrising
sorry about the spelling, i'm a little sleepy this morning, oh well must have some roast snake it is sunday in Australia the lucky country

I've been of the opinion lately that a few of Larkin's poem's (i.e. Nothing to Be Said' has similar themes to Under Milkwood) speak to Dylan Thomas' work - though I haven't read he was influenced by his work.

everytime i write a poem, a wart seems to grow in the comment section
and it is a bad wart bad poetry, but i suppose we do have people with really tiny brains in the world, who would actually read it, the author of the wartish poetry is a very sick person he doesn't know this because he is not thinking that clearly at the moment, when i saw it i wasn't surprised or amazed
not even amused, fans sometimes become erratic so i must live with it

Yeah, Mark. I agree that what we read about a writer's life does colour our opinion of him/her. If you read a poem once you've read what was going on his/her life at the time it was written, it immediately alters the meaning of the poem. Sometimes, I think it's almost better to know nothing about them and let the poem speak for itself. On another point there was something else that Larkin said too that amused me, about doing poetry readings. He avoided them like the plague and said 'he didn't want to go around pretending to be me'. Interesting. Larkin did turn down the role of 'Laureate' but he was very
ill around that time.

I suppose, considering the times, that Shakespeare had the odd dalliance with a young boy or girl.. the times dictated the terms.

It is difficult to separate the biography from the work once the artist's personality is exposed, unfortunately. Roman Polanski's work was (as far as I know) banned in the US because of his extra-curricular pursuits... hence preventing any critique of a good body of creative work.

It is an interesting question - if work has merit and is written by someone with questionable morals... should the work be judged independently? I believe it should and in fact, banning anything because of the work itself or the artist's questionable CV seems to titillate an audience's interest - perhaps it is more beneficial to be a bad boy or girl and get the information out there.. then one's work is guaranteed to succeed ;)

I do believe that poets take word photographs of events and emotions for others to relate to later. If a person can read a poem and say: 'hey, yeah, I know what that feels like, I can relate to that', then a poem is worth every word.

I also don't think obscurity does a poet or a reader any favours whatsoever. Conceptual poetry that only makes sense to the poet him/herself is of little value in the greater scheme, IMHO.